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Now the face of Ole Miss baseball's pitching staff, Derek Diamond takes the next step

11by:Jake Thompson•02/08/22•

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Derek Diamond
Derek Diamond

There is no Doug Nikhazy. There is no Gunnar Hoglund. The Ole Miss pitching staff is Derek Diamond’s to lead into the 2022 season.

In the previous two seasons, Diamond had both Nikhazy and Hoglund to lean on but now Diamond is the seasoned starter that the rest of the Rebel arms look to.

With all the pressure and expectations put on Diamond this season, he is keeping himself centered thanks to a former Rebel ace.

“I learned something really cool from Doug Nikhazy and that’s playing baseball,” Diamdond said. “That’s what we’re doing out here. Of course there’s a lot that goes into it but watching him play, he shows up and he would chew his bubble gum, hate the other team and then go pitch against them.”

Simplifying the task at hand might help Diamond, who struggled with consistency last season that kept him rotating in and out of the weekend rotation.

Diamond also took the offseason to work on getting his fastball where it was at the start of last season before it went away.

Last February, Diamond was throwing his fastball in the upper 90s before it petered off and he had to work on location, which at times was an issue. Some tinkering between last June to now has helped Diamond regain confidence in that pitch.

In 2021, Diamond posted a 3-5 record and a 5.26 earned run average in 20 appearances. He started in 14 of those.

Diamond worked with fellow right-hander Taylor Broadway to hone in his fastball and had two goals during fall practice: to throw the fastball more and to make it more effective.

“You wouldn’t think the fastball is such a complicated pitch but it is,” Diamdon said. “It’s probably the most complicated pitch. We worked with Rapsodo and bunch of other analytical devices that help you see what your fastball does and why it does what it does and why it’s effective against some hitters and why it’s not against other hitters.

“I came in with a four-seam and a two-seam fastball like a lot of guys do. Pretty soon after I came here I switched over to just a four-seam fastball and the reason you do that is because you want to generate ride on your fastball which makes it harder to hit.”

Diamond says he saw a lot of growth in the fastball and generated more spin and was able to move it around.

Another aspect of Diamond’s game seeing progression is finally having SEC and postseason experience under his belt.

The 2020 season was canceled days before conference play was to begin, which meant last year was Diamond, and others’, first time through the gauntlet of the SEC and the postseason.

Having that experience to rely on and knowing how certain moments will be when he gets in those situations again is beneficial in Diamond’s eyes.

“Last year was really our first year. 2020 seemed like a fairy tale,” Diamond said. “We won every game, I did well. But we were playing Xavier and Princeton. Last year, going through the gauntlet of the SEC taught us all a bunch.

“We do have an older team this year and a lot of expectations coming back and I think the experience last year will really help.”

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